September 2017

09/14/2017

Poems About Dictators

So you may know I’ve been reading anthologies of political, protest and resistance poetry, both new and old. As I’ve done this, I’ve been sharing excerpts of particularly prescient or arresting lines to my friends on Facebook. So that got me beginning my own catalog of poems about dictatorships and lawless regimes. As I continue, I'll keep updating it. Check out Poems About Dictators.

Orthodoxy

I also read a good piece on Leftist Orthodoxy and Social Justice from Medium by an activist named Heartscape and it contained a rewrite of a poem called "If I can't dance, It's not my revolution" by Emma Goldman. It's an extension of the article which is about inclusiveness, creativity and intolerance within a political movement, not a heavily figurative poem but the kind of poem that clearly communicates frustration within a group of opinionated activists.

If I can’t fuck up and learn from my mistakes, then it’s not my revolution.If I can’t disagree with you, then it’s not my revolution.If I can’t ask questions, then it’s not my revolution.If I can’t decide for myself what tactics I will use, then it’s not my revolution.If I can’t be femme, then it’s not my revolution.If I can’t choose my own friends, then it’s not my revolution.If I can’t bring my family, then it’s not my revolution.If I can’t bring my culture, then it’s not my revolution.If I can’t bring my ancestors, then it’s not my revolution.And if it’s not our revolution, then let’s build a new one.

The Lazarus

Poet Amy King also recently helped organize a project of poets writing poems inspired by the Statue of Liberty and Emma Lazarus' poem. This became a controversy recently when the White House senior policy advisor, Stephen Miller, disparaged the poem as not containing foundational ideas about America.

More Political Poetry News

Poet for the Age of Brexit, Revisiting the work of A. E. Housman (The Atlantic) Today, in the age of Brexit and the renewed movement for Scottish independence, the question of what Englishness means is once again up for debate.

Known to be the greatest of the Japanese haiku poets, Basho was influenced by Zen Buddhism and wanted miniature perfection in a poem. This required only seventeen syllables broken into sections of 5-7-5. In later years, he journeyed through Japan doing travel sketches tied together with his haiku. When translated, the poems lose their original syllable configuration.

“A poem is a city filled with streets and sewers filled with saints, heroes, beggars, madmen, filled with banality and booze, filled with rain and thunder and periods of drought, a poem is a city at war…”

I love how these poems bump up against each other. Two travelers, two poems. The card talks about Bukowski's “pure, undiluted voice from the street, attached to no school, tradition, or ideology save that of day-to-day survival.” The “unflinching honesty” of his poems dealt with bus terminals, boarding houses and racetracks. The movie Barfly was based on his writings. There's also a very cool database of his work.

"Like a clamorous flock of birds in alarm All my memories descend and take form, Descend through the yellow foliage of my heart That watches its trunk of alder twist apart, To the violet foil of the water of remorse Which nearby runs its melancholy course…"

The card says his credo was “music before all things” and he spent a life of rages, romantic obsessions, alienation, and prison time for shooting Arthur Rimbaud (see the movie Total Eclipse or Big Bang Poetry's review) because he was full of “inner turmoil.”

“He disappeared in the dead of winter: The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted, And snow disfigured the public statues;The memory sank in the mouth of the dying day.What instruments we have agreeThe day of his death was a cold dark day.”

Auden emigrated to America, the card said. This was my first clue (aside from the stats below) that this is an English deck. Auden's famous saying, “poetry makes nothing happen” was misunderstood and what Auden meant was "that poetry had no hand in the evil events taking place in Europe at the time---the rise of fascism in Spain, Italy and Germany and the impending war." He meant instead that poetry was “a way of happening, a mouth.” If you understand that, let me know. I'm still having trouble with it.

“Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.”

Ireland’s greatest literary figure, says the card. Yeats was a collector of folktales and legends, a senator and a self-styled oracle. This poem was his reaction to the Black and Tan War in Ireland where British troops came to quell an uprising.

“If I meet you suddenly, I can’t speak—my tongue is broken; a think flame runs under my skin; seeing nothing, hearing only my ears drumming, I drip with sweat; trembling shakes my body and I turn paler than dry grass…”

Sappho was from the Greek island of Lesbos and was the aristocratic head of a poetry school. She was once as famous as Homer. She was allegedly bisexual and her love poems were “meant to be sung in the Mixolydian mode she invented.”

“Call the roller of big cigars The muscular one, and bid him whip In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.”

This was a jarring paring against Sappho! Stevens was an American modernist and insurance executive. “Stevens chose to lead a life of quiet middle-class conform in order to make room for his real vocation, poetry.” His first book was published when he was 43. He wrote that this poem had “something of the essential gaudiness of poetry…obviously not about ice cream.”